What I do is a far cry from the storefront psychics. I never ask for any background information, and keep my questions to a minimum during the reading, usually asking questions solely to affirm I am connected to the proper energy. I have been to many psychics (yes readers get readings too!)- some excellent, and some who are nothing short of con- artists.

Before you consider getting a reading, ask your higher self if this person you are choosing to hire will read for your best interest, or if they are seeking to simply squeeze as much money out of you as possible.

Often this is difficult to do , as we tend to hire others for insight when we are in a place of emotional vulnerability… but do your best nonetheless. Your higher self/ intuition will always lead the way. Its important YOU feel a connection to the person you’re paying to connect to you

Here’s an overview of how the scammers operate:
1) they feed you lines that pertain to anyone
2) they then prey upon your fears – the future you desire is threatened by “darkness”
3) only to sell you some sort of cleansing or candles that are necessary to procure your happiness

I shall elaborate:

1) The Cold Read – or Canned Read

This sort of reading can be characterized by generalities that can apply to literally anyone. The reader will often work with your palm, a crystal ball, or even cards, that act merely as ruses or props. The words they offer you will literally come from a pre-written script that will resonate with 99% of potential clients : hence the title ” canned” reading … their connection to you is nonexistent or ” cold” .

Indicators you’re getting a canned read :
” You are a good person, always trying to help others – but you never seem to get anything in return ”

” Your partner is showing you a pattern of hot and cold – back and forth. Its because he / she is confused .” (with no elaboration as to what this confusion is)

“The reason why your partner is acting this way / broke up with you / cheated is because of fear ” (with no elaboration as to what kind of fear)

“You have had struggles with your finances and are seeking stability . Have no fear, you’re heading in the right direction but there are some ‘blocks’ along the way ‘” (again, no detail of what these blocks actually are)

See the generalities forming ? A GOOD reader will connect to you with ZERO backstory .. and be able to tell you WHY they are afraid or confused, WHAT EXACTLY is in the way between you and your destiny, and offer details.

2) The Reading takes an Ominous turn

” I am seeing a darkness surrounding you …. ”
” there is an entity that i see that has been following you causing these problems with luck / money ”
” your aura is looking dark and needs cleansing ”
” your name /birthday / family is cursed”
” Unless this negative energy is removed, you and your soulmate will never reunite”

ALL of this nonsense is a ploy to get you to pay for some sort of “cleansing”, candle work or spiritual assistance. (see candle same below)

I have been working as a healer for 7 years. In nearly every energy or spiritual work session, I clean up my clients’ energy field, or remove some stuck entity or energy from their Aura. Its really no big deal. We pick up negative energies just walking down the street.

At least a few times a month I have have individuals coming to me believing that there is a curse or evil eye upon them. Often this was told to them or reinforced by another reader. Only a handful of times has there actually been some sort of dark working or evil spirit to contend with…

3) Cleansings/ Candle Scams

Have you ever wondered how storefront psychics manage to get by charging $10 or $20 for a read ? …particularly in NYC where the cost of real estate is sky high… They make their money UP-CHARGING you after they have riled up your fears!

Once they have convinced you that your lover will never return, you’ll be financially destitute or unlucky due to this “darkness”, they swoop in with a hard sell to fix it via some candle nonsense or cleansing that never takes place. Often times they are “special candles from Jerusalem” or some other holy place, or have been supposedly blessed or charged by some magnanimous individual you have never heard of… and cost anywhere from $20 to a couple hundred dollars!

Burning candles and praying over them is indeed legitimate – it occurs in churches and temples worldwide every moment…. its a part of my own personal practice. The difference with the scammers is that they claim you NEED these candles , and even after they are purchased, the scammers often don’t do any prayers or work at all.

In extreme cases, when a client is particularly distraught or love-lorn, the scammer convinces them to fork over large sums of money for “curse removal” . There have been multiple cases in the New York City papers over the last few years of individuals being conned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars ! If someone is demanding large sums of money to do any sort of darkness removal – RUN !

Last but not least… ” I Reunite Lost Lovers — Guaranteed”

No one can bring back a lover in 24 hours, and magical work never carries a guarantee. Even the darkest of black magic, in which you put someone under complete magical submission carries no guarantee…. and such work is not the sort of thing the average gypsy psychic undertakes as it carries MASSIVE negative karmic implications.

Reconciliation spells, love spells and break up spells are all real. A true sorcerer or witch can actually bend someone’s free will for you, however there are very few true magical practitioners that can do this… and its dirty dirty work. Before you consider doing such a thing, ask yourself , how would you feel if someone else made YOU their slave and took away your freedom to make your own decisions ? Not good, eh? Don’t do it to someone else..

Recently I attended a charity event and ran into a young woman I had met nearly 2 years prior through a mutual friend. Feeling out of place in the bar environment, I was excited to speak with her, as I recalled her also being a Reiki practitioner.

We started to chat. It wasn’t so much a chat, as it was her own monologue, detailing her recent achievements. She begins by telling me she recently began attending a University to pursue a new program that sounded unique, progressive and like it would change the way medicine is performed in typical Western institutions. Pretty cool. I told her that I, too had recently been accepted to the same University for a different holistic medicine program. At this point I’m psyched we are chatting.

She then launches into how she had just completed a multi day conference in this field as she is a speaker at conventions. I find this extra intriguing, and somewhat suspect, as, when we met, just 20 short months prior, she seemed to not know anything about spiritual healing, and was grilling me about my work; in particular how I supported myself financially as a ” healer”….. I begin to wonder how, in such a short duration, she became so expertly qualified to speak at conferences. My ego/bullshit-antennae pop up but I give her a pass, as up until this point, her work seemed transformative and mostly legitimate.

In comes the braggadocio, “Not only THAT, I’m a Reiki Master, and now I’m doing ‘Reiki Shamanism’ ” My bullshit antennae are then fully engaged, as ‘Reiki Shamanism’ is a fluffy new agey branding term and the way she was speaking about Shamanism led me to believe she truly had absolutely no idea what in the world she was talking about and was bluffing out her ass. Just to see what malarky would spill out next, I tell her my roots are in Hawaiian and Celtic Shamanism ( this is true) and I have extensively studied the Indian and Nepali traditions, (also true) but I dont know shit about the African tradition she claimed to follow. (not entirely true). I figured if she was telling me the truth, she could actually follow the conversation and offer something. I begin speaking about the work that I do.

Sure enough, she shifts the conversation back to the problems she sees in the medical field. I express my disgust over healers who charge exorbitant amounts, “I believe healing should be accessible to all. Ive seen some Reiki practitioners and people like ‘us’ charging $300 a session and have these ridiculous plans where people are required to purchase more than one session, like a subscription…. so they roped into spending like a thousand bucks right off the bat…”

She retorts , “well I charge $400, but its for two hours… so its not that bad….. I do require a follow up …. but I have thought a lot about pricing and I know that’s what I’m worth. I am a Reiki Master with over 10 years in the Wellness space and this is what I feel I deserve.”

Say what? Yeah, no. Ego and Bullshit meters are now reeling off the charts.
As her egoic monologue continues, I think back to when we first spoke 20 months prior. She was pretty humble at the time, volunteering as a Reiki practitioner at a hospital. I gave her a referral to my Reiki Master, as she was a level 1 and was looking to advance. I remember her being super interested in my work and the fact that I made a living full time as a healer. Whatever she was doing at the time, it was not Reiki and definitely not healing. Her lies about her experience were so egregious it actually made me question my own recollection. On the way home from the event in the taxi I pulled up our facebook conversation from the day after we met, and sure enough, found my message referring her to my mentor to learn energetic and spiritual healing as well as continue her Reiki studies. I even pulled up her LinkedIn profile, which boasts of her decade long experience in ……. nope not ‘wellness’ .. are you ready ?
Fundraising.

So a mere 20 months after she had literally zero experience with spiritual healing, she somehow is a “speaker” and requires those interested in healing themselves to commit $800 to even BEGIN with her.

As I was reeling in disbelieve that this ” healer” was blatantly lying to my face she asks me, “So do you know how to do a Soul Retrieval by yourself? ” I nearly fell off the banquette as she then indicated that she does not know how to Journey.

For those unfamiliar, Shamans do all of their work on the astral, or spiritual plane. Journeying involves going into trance, leaving the earth plane, and going off on the astral to interact with spirit for the purpose of healing. This woman’s inability to Journey, as a self proclaimed “Reiki Shamanism” practitioner, is like someone calling themselves a Nascar driver and not knowing how to drive.

The real crime occurred moments later, when got up on stage to lead the 150 or so gathered in a “grounding meditation.” She instructed everyone to close their eyes, ” breathe in love and intention, and breathe out everything that doesnt serve” (cliche. but ok) and picture a white light beginning at our feet, and travelling up to our crowns.

No. Just No. Grounding is the complete opposite of white light travelling UP the body. That sort of meditation, if anything, will connect you to the higher realms via your crown chakra. Grounding 101: you send your energy DOWN into the earth, similar to the grounding prong on an outlet. ..NOT UP !!

So this “Shaman” who doesnt know how to journey, with less than two years experience as a Reiki Master, is charging DOUBLE what most far older, wiser healers with decades of actual life experience charge, and is standing up in front of large crowd, and giving them complete bullshit instruction. I sat there becoming simultaneously sickened and irate that the 150 or so folks in that room might do this nonsense meditation on their own, when they have an actual need to ground. Anger boiled inside of me thinking of all of he clients who come to her sad or feeling helpless, seeking spiritual medicine, but instead are force fed a metaphorical sugar pill, and wind up just as sad or broken as they were before…. and $800 poorer.

Still wondering why this liar made me so livid?

Fakes like her make it difficult for actual healers to heal. Countless individuals truly needing unconventional methods such as energy work and shamanic healing will be deterred from going deeper and doing the work they truly need to do, after their $400 session yields zero results. Some will see her super high rates and assume she must be very special to command such money, and choose her over a true and humble healer charging half, under the assumption that the cheaper healer might not be as good. Instead of referrals, those who couldnt feel the benefits will tell their friends that Reiki and spiritual healing is a bunch of baloney. Instead of helping the greater good, these bullshit artists inhibit it.

In New York City, there is a pretty large pseudo-spirituality culture forming, where nearly everyone is a self professed ” healer”. Parties abound combining fluffy self invented healing meditations of dubious origen, mixed with “yoga” mixed with DJ’s. More often than not, the ” healer” up there on stage leading the meditation is similar to the specimen I encountered last night : lacking substance, humility and experience, while egoically seeking to build their practice/ name by doing their “work” at these trendy functions. Somehow the instagram/facebook self-branding of everyone as trickled into the healing space, yielding “healers” believing a following cultivated by by speaking/ attending parties / hashtagging will yield a successful practice.

All of the real healers I know just fucking do the work. When youre aligned with your purpose and acting in service, as a healer or otherwise, the universe facilitates the rest : clients find you, money flows when you need it, you get exactly what you need.

What began as anger for this woman, turned to pity when I realized that she charges what she does, and talks the way she does because she is so rooted in her own ego, she couldn’t possibly align with the flow of her purpose. She is struggling, and will continue to .

Please choose to heal yourself alongside someone to whom your soul is drawn, NOT because they speak to crowds and charge exorbitant fees. Experiential knowledge dictates that the more branded and fluffed up a healer is, the more inexperienced and full of it they usually are.

Please consider this as a cautionary tale.

Lots of Love,
Kimberly

P.S. Extra-curricular activity if you want a really good chuckle : Watch ‘ Kumare’ , a documentary in which a totally normal dude pretends to be a healer… and amasses a cult following who eat his b.s. up with a spoon. Its available on Netflix, I believe…